


Old Friends

by cheloniidae



Category: BioShock
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-10
Updated: 2015-09-10
Packaged: 2018-04-20 01:04:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4767761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cheloniidae/pseuds/cheloniidae
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"These whirlybirds are custom jobs... by an old friend." In the wake of James' disappearance, Grace Holloway finds help from an unexpected source.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Old Friends

Grace’s songs are softer, now. Before, she saw her voice as a knife, scraping away the paint Ryan and his cronies covered city’s rotten core with, letting people see the truth. She swore to herself she’d never sing “Rise, Rapture, Rise” until the city deserved it. But that was then, and here she is now, rehearsing it in a little apartment that James will never come home to again.

The rotten little tune tastes foul in her mouth. She hates every bar of it. _We merrily sing this reprise…_ Merrily, as though people aren’t starving in the depths of Rapture. As though she doesn’t walk by them every day.

What would James think of her, now that she’s gone and turned herself into another one of Ryan’s songbirds? He wouldn’t be proud of her for it, not how he always used to be. He’d be ashamed. But he’s been gone five days, and she’s scared to death that if she doesn’t toe the line, she’ll be next.

There’s a knock on her door halfway through the last verse, and Grace nearly jumps. Even in her own damn room, she feels like a rabbit in an open field. Her mouth goes dry from fear. Did they knock when they took James? She thinks about pretending she isn’t there— but what if they heard her singing? What if they break down the door? She’ll have nowhere to run.

Her heart hammers away in her chest as she unlocks the two top locks. The chain on the door stays. She prays Ryan Security isn’t on the other side and opens the door as far as the chain will allow.

Grace didn’t think she’d ever be glad to see Charles Milton Porter after what he said about Doctor Lamb, but anyone is better than Ryan Security. The relief is almost dizzying.

“Didn’t think I’d see you in the Drop again,” she says, undoing the chain and opening the door. Any man who can pay to have a statue brought down from the surface is too rich to set foot in the Drop, but he always said he liked her singing. He came to hear her even after she was banned from all but the lower-class clubs. _You're talking sense_ , he'd say. James thought he was a friend. Grace did too, until she saw the way he looked at her butterfly pin. But she can tell from the look on his face that he isn’t here to argue politics.

“I heard about James,” is the first thing he says. “I’m sorry, Grace.”

She closes the door behind him, locks it for good measure, and gestures for him to take a seat in a worn-down chair. He seems glad to be someplace cleaner than the outside of the Drop. She doesn’t offer him any drink. He has plenty, but she doesn’t. No one who lives here does. At least he had the sense not to come swanning in here in a fancy suit with a gold watch on his wrist.

“What’d you hear about it?” she asks carefully. The few people who aren’t too scared to admit James ever existed are still too scared to admit it wasn’t his choice to leave. God knows how many lies were added to the story before it reached Minerva’s Den.

“I heard he ran off,” and he holds up a hand to keep Grace from shoving him out the door before he can finish, “but I don’t believe he would. He was a better man than that. And I know who he was speaking out against before he disappeared.”

“Ryan.” Grace lowers her voice and leans forward. She can’t shake the feeling that she’s being listened to, no matter how hard she tries. "Everyone here’s too scared to admit it, but I know it was him. I know it.”

“He’s got his secret police rifling through the Archives. Said they were looking for evidence of subversives. Looked to me like they were trying to cook up cases against anyone Ryan doesn’t like. Other folks have been getting… disappeared, from all over Rapture. James isn’t the first.”

“Jesus. Ryan calls Rapture free.” Grace laughs, bitterness and threadbare exhaustion and just a hair’s width away from despair. “And now I do, too. 'Rise, Rapture, Rise.' What would James say to me now?”

“This isn’t your war. He'd understand that. He'd want you safe.” Grace wishes she felt as certain as he sounds, but she knew James better. He wouldn’t forgive her for betraying them all like this.

“What if it’s not enough? What if they come for me next?” She remembers the relief in Charles’ eyes when she opened the door and adds, “Is that why you came here? To see if they got me?”

“I came here because I’m worried about you. And because I’ve got something for you back at the Den.”

“I can’t pay for—“

“James was my friend, Grace. There’s nothing I can do for him, but I can try to keep the same from happening to you. Give you something to tip the odds in your favor.”

Grace hesitates. A little thought sticks in the back of her mind like a splinter: if she leaves, how can she know she’ll come back? But she’s no safer here than she is with him. She pushes her misgivings aside and says, “All right.”

* * *

 

The office is more lavish than anything Grace has seen in years. The Den itself is impressive, all neon and screens and high vaulted ceilings, but this room speaks to power. It might intimidate someone who hasn’t known Charles since the bathysphere ride down from the surface, but that someone isn’t Grace.

She wonders, not for the first time, if Charles could get some real changes done if he set his mind to it. She wonders if he’d end up disappearing like James, if just bringing her here is going to cause him trouble.

Charles leads her to his desk, and the fine carpet swallows her footsteps. For a moment, she’s struck with the urge to look over her shoulder for anyone sneaking around. But this office is secure — like Charles explained when the door scanned her, it won’t open for anyone but him — and if there’s anywhere she can relax, it has to be here.

Without the fear, there’s nothing to cover the emptiness James left her with. She wills it back, holds on to it tight.

“Here they are,” says Charles, breaking her out of her thoughts. He gestures to the two inactive security bots lying still on his desk. The few she’s seen in the Drop were improvised jobs, counterweighted with apple boxes, but there’s nothing improvised about these beauties. “Once I’ve synced them to your genetic signature, you’ll be the proud owner of two top-of-the-line security bots.”

“And what’ll people say when they see these followin’ me around?”

“I’ve programmed them to stay out of sight. You’ll know they’re there, but most folks won’t.”

Grace runs a finger down the glossy metal side of one. “These little fellas can beat Ryan’s dogs?”

“They’ll give them one hell of a fight.“

“Hm.” There’s the barest hint of a smile on her face. If she goes down, at least she won’t go down easy. “I bet they will. How does this… genetic sync work?”

“Step over to the console and I’ll walk you through it.”

It doesn’t take long. A quick genetic sample, ten minutes of entering commands and fiddling with the bots, and both bots are flying, lights glowing green. Charles looks at them with something that has to be pride, and Grace remembers he never had children, either. Robots are poor substitutes for a flesh-and-blood baby, but at least he has something.

“I made another small adjustment to them,” he says when he’s done with his last tests of the bots’ subroutines.

“And what’s that?”

He holds down a button on the side of one of them. “Hum a few bars of something.”

Grace arches an eyebrow at him, but hums the opening bars of “The Entertainer” over the quiet whirring of propellers. The bots join in after a couple seconds, whistling and chirping the song even after she stops. Grace can’t help laughing, genuine for the first time since James didn’t come home. The world is upside down, but for a moment, everything feels set aright. “You taught them to sing for me?” 

“Computers can learn to do anything. All you need is the data to give them.”

“Should I be worried they’ll put me out of a job? Let the managers pay them with bolts and batteries?”

It’s his turn to laugh. “No. But I thought they would help with the quiet.” The last bit is serious— gentle, almost. He’s speaking from his own experience, dealing with that empty loneliness. It wasn’t something she understood before now.

“I don’t know what I can do to thank you.”

“You don’t have to.”

He hasn’t taken back any of what he said about Doctor Lamb — ‘nutcase’ and ‘half-baked mumbo-jumbo’ are the ones that stick out in her memory — but if this is his way of making things up to her, well… it’s more than nothing. He’s still an old friend, after all.

She could go now, leave Charles to his work, try to practice a bit more before tonight’s revue. Going home to an empty room, though, and an empty bed… It couldn’t hurt to stay a while longer. And he isn’t acting like he wants her out.

The pair of photographs on his desk catch her eye. She didn’t pay them mind when she walked in, but looking at them, it’s obvious who it is.  “That’s Pearl?” Grace has heard Charles talk about her before; it was why she suggested he see Doctor Lamb in the first place, him holding on to her more than a decade and a half after her death. But she’s never seen a photo until now.

“Yes, that’s her.” She can hear him soften at the name.

“She was a beauty.”

“She was.” _She was the only woman I ever loved,_ he told her once. Well, James was the only man she ever loved. What does that make the two of them?

Alone, is what it makes them.

Doctor Lamb’s weekly sessions aren't until tomorrow. Grace hasn’t been able to talk to anyone about this yet, and the words force their way out like seawater from a leak. “I keep expectin’ him to be there. I’ll turn to my side to tell him something, or I’ll start his coffee in the mornin’, or I’ll get something to make him for dinner… and I remember he’s gone. It’s like losing him all over again. Every hour, every day.” Her voice quavers at the end, but she holds herself together. Crying kills her singing voice, and she has a show tonight. A show singing goddamned "Rise, Rapture, Rise"; a show James will never see. “Does it ever get easier?”

“I don’t know yet.” It’s a quiet, sad admission, the kind of thing she could write a song about. Grace knows what it looks like when grief seeps into someone’s marrow. It happened to her mama, and it happened to Charles, but it won’t happen to her. She makes a promise to herself, right there in that office: she won’t turn James into a weight to carry.

“Mr. Porter,” pipes a voice from a speaker, “Mr. Wahl is asking to see you in Core Access.”

“Go to it. I’ve taken enough of your time.”

“I could tell him to wait. Walk back with you.”

“Kind of you to offer, but these whirlybirds are all the protection I need. And you don’t need people talkin’.” She wouldn’t be surprised if Ryan is already looking for a reason to get Charles out of the picture; there’s no sense in giving him more ammunition. “I won’t forget you doin’ this for me.” She thinks about offering her hand to shake, then decides to hell with it, and pulls him into a hug. “Goodbye, Charles.”

“Goodbye, Grace.” She knows full well she might not see him again, and from the sound of it, he knows it too.

The bots, green lights still glowing, follow Grace to the door. The fear isn’t gone, but it’s less. If anyone comes after her, they’ll get more than they bargained for. “Grace?” Charles calls as the door opens. She turns around to face him. “There _is_ something you can do to thank me. Stay safe.”

“I will, thanks to these.” She can’t quite smile, so she settles for a nod. “You keep your eyes open.”

“I will.”

* * *

It’s been a year since she saw him, and it would’ve been so easy for her not to find out. Not to know. If she’d taken a different path, she wouldn’t have seen the newspaper lying in the street. She wouldn’t have seen the name Charles Milton Porter in an article pushed to the side of the front page.

‘Founder of Rapture Central Computing arrested for treason,’ says the article’s title. Saltwater’s gotten to the paper; not all the words are legible. But she sees treason, and she sees his name, and she knows that wherever they took him, he isn't coming back.

They got him first.

Grace takes the paper back to her room. Still empty, emptier than ever with Eleanor gone. Everything’s gone– James, the Limbo, Sofia, baby Eleanor… the list goes on and on. And now she has another name to add to it.

Crying kills her singing voice, but she has nothing left to sing.


End file.
